


A Truce

by riverbanks



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7401697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbanks/pseuds/riverbanks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You have his eyes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Truce

It was late, it’d been a long day and they were tired, that must have been it. That must be why she was bringing this up now, why she was even talking to him after they’d spent the day in mostly comfortable silence, content to watch and let others do the speaking--but it had been a good day too, and Alistair was in better spirits today than he had in a long time, and that’s why he let it slide. Today wasn’t the day for this.

“He’s been dead for a while,” he answered with a smirk. “That would smell pretty bad.”

There was a shift in the seat beside him as she sat up a little straighter. “Not Maric,” Anora amended. “I meant Cailan.”

“I know what you meant.”

They sat in silence as the carriage trotted lazily along the streets of Denerim, headed back towards the palace. It was a short distance, Alistair could have probably walked there faster on his own, but he didn’t _walk_ anywhere anymore. Walking, apparently, wasn’t a thing that kings did. He understood now why they were all fat in their fancy kingly portraits.

Anora shifted again, and Alistair looked out through the small slit between the fancy curtains. It was strange to see the streets of Denerim, usually bursting to full with people, and merchants and dogs, so empty. The last time he’d seen them in the quiet of night like this was… it wasn’t such a long time ago, but it felt like it’d been a lifetime or two before this one.

“Listen--”

“It’s not--”

Anora froze, her hand in the air mid-gesture, and Alistair snorted under his breath. They kept doing this, talking over each other. There was a timing around each other they still hadn’t figured out, but they were working on it. He thought they were working on it, at least. It wasn’t like they talked about it--or much of anything else. At least not yet. But they were working on that, too.

Anora conceded first, lowering her hand and gesturing for him to speak. Alistair shook his head, it wasn’t… important, really.

“The way you looked at them, back there,” she said, and it didn’t explain much.

They’d spent the day in the alienage, by invitation of the elder. It was a celebration for their newly appointed Bann, Soris, who had insisted their presence there would help the community build trust in the new monarchs. Alistair wasn’t sure that trust was entirely justified--it would be hard to bring immediate change to the people who most needed it, that the court had already taught him in the short time he’d been acting king.

But he’d seen the alienage from inside during the Blight, knew those people needed him to be better than empty promises, and knew it was worth trying. Giving the alienage the voice of a Bann in the court was a start -but only a start.

“It was… gentle,” Anora continued, startling him from his thoughts. “The way you looked at them. Cailan had a way of looking, too, when he saw… the people. The world outside the palace.”

“Didn’t do much about it, from what I hear,” Alistair bit back, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth. He wasn’t trying to be bitter, not over Cailan again. Not tonight.

“No,” Anora muttered, in quiet agreement, to his surprise. It wasn’t what Alistair had expected, not by far. “Maric never--”

She hanged on the word, a bit longer than comfortable. Alistair shuffled in his seat, sitting up a bit straighter too, turning slightly to face her. “Never what?”

Anora still seemed to think on it a little longer, searching for right words to say it, maybe, without turning it into an argument. She suddenly looked to Alistair as tired as he felt, here, in this rare moment of privacy between them.

“He never seemed to care,” Anora finally answered. “Maric wasn’t a cold man, but he never seemed to... care about anything. The kingdom, the people. He never taught Cailan to care either, _how_ to care for Ferelden when his time came.”

“But he still did,” Anora continued before Alistair could interrupt. “Cailan cared so much. He loved Ferelden, he loved the people, he hated to see... how the world is, outside. He never knew what to do about any of it, and I guess--but he cared. Like you do. He looked at them the way you do.

But you’re--you’re doing something about it, I suppose, and that’s....”

Alistair watched her as she stared at the hem of her dress, finishing the thought in her head, then composed herself again, hands neatly crossed over her lap. Anora, always so confident, so certain of where every step would take her. He’d never seen her struggle with words like this.

“You remind me of him in… not such a cruel way, sometimes,” she finished, looking away and out the curtains on her own side, her voice trailing down to almost a whisper. “That’s all I meant to say.”

He leaned back on his seat, giving the silence of night a moment to settle back in. Taking her words in, too. There was… a good point in there, he was sure--he just wasn’t sure he had the caught the right one. But it wasn’t exactly unpleasant to hear. It took a certain measure of--something he didn’t know the right word to, for Anora to let him, of all people, see her anything less than fully drawn and poised, as the court demanded of their queen.

“I remind you of him all the time,” he teased at last, unsure how else to respond.

“See, now you’re being annoying, _just_ like him too,” Anora snapped, a little bit, and Alistair couldn’t help the laughter that burst out of him.

“Thank you,” he mock-curtsied, her glare only making it funnier. “Although, if our father was such a grand tool, and we had different mothers, I’m still wondering where did I steal his eyes from.”

Anora’s glare could melt the great glaciers of the Frostbacks now, and still Alistair couldn’t stop grinning. “You really are the most infuriating Theirin I’ve had the trouble of marrying, you know.”

\---

“You know,” Alistair said as he extended a hand to his--wife, his Queen--the words still new and strange to him, hard to come naturally even in days like this, when they were doing alright. Better.

“You have his eyes too,” he continued, as Anora held onto his hand for leverage to descend from the carriage. “You father’s, I mean. Icy and scary… yes, just like that thing you’re doing now.”

She let go of his hand walked past him, towards the open palace doors, giving him one last mock-glare for the easy bait. “Of course I do.”

“It’s not a compliment!” he called out, trailing a few steps behind her.

She glanced back, a small smirk playing on her lips. “Of course it is.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is also linked [on my tumblr](http://riverbanks.tumblr.com/post/146968186175).


End file.
